About Us

About The Meriden Family Programme

The Meriden Family Programme is a training and organisational development programme, which has been promoting the development of family-sensitive mental health services since 1998. It is an NHS Programme which is part of Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation NHS Trust and operates at a local, national and international level.

The Programme is the largest of its kind worldwide with over 5142 therapists trained in family work and over 376 people trained as trainers and supervisors in family work representing professions from all of the different specialty areas. Hundreds of professionals, family members and service users have benefited from its extensive array of specialist training packages, study days, internationally recognised conferences and well-accessed web site.

The overall aim of the Programme is to ensure that service users and families have access to family sensitive services and evidence based interventions. This is achieved by training clinical staff, service users and carers in the skills needed to work with families, and to ensure that workers are able to implement these interventions following receipt of training through influencing management and creating a supportive host culture in the organisation.

Carers and service users are actively involved in the Programme in a number of capacities. Several have trained as therapists and some of these have trained as trainers and supervisors. Carers and service users act as consultants to the programme and are key people in the development of new initiatives and delivery of training programmes.